Drabbles
by Avasaya
Summary: A collection of undeveloped thoughts and scenes for Naruto, Harry Potter, Death Note, etc. Hopefully, you find it relatively interesting.
1. KaedeNaruto

Almost everybody regarded ANBU with respect. Many civilians even regarded ANBU with a childlike amazement. Quite a few of the ninja did as well. From their point of view, How could you not?

To the ANBU were the noble, self-sacrificing knights in the shadows working day in and day out to ensure the safety of Konoha.

They were the powerhouses. They were the ones who were sent on suicide mission after suicide mission and managed to come back each time. They were the ones that could kill a king and get away scot-free.

They had to be masters of deception as well.

Of course there were certain open ANBU whom everybody knew about. For instance, when Kakashi Hatake entered ANBU, everybody knew. When Itachi Uchiha entered ANBU, everybody and their mother knew.

But ANBU itself was based off of secrecy and integration. There was a reason for the masks. Most active ANBU were disguised as civilians. That nice lady that lived down the street that grows petunias on her window sill, the loud and boisterous merchant's son who you sometimes sit down with for a smoke on those lazy Sunday afternoons, the silent rice farmer who comes in to sell his crop twice a year, any one of them could be an ANBU. You'd never know. That unnerved the ninjas and amazed the civilians.

They were skilled, certainly.

They were held in prestige, most definitely.

All of the genin wanted to be one and the jonin and tobetsku jonin without ANBU experience envied their skills.

They were fools.

And Ibiki Morino knew it. It disgusted him.

In reality, ANBU were the silent, masked killers that were constantly working to protect the village, damn the means. They were the ones that would take on any missions regardless of how shady. They were the ones that carried out the underhand assassinations, subterfuge, and betrayals that the village required but could never own up to. They were the ones that will kill any target regardless of age or innocence. They were the ones that performed hideous crimes under the guise of enemy villages for the sake of instigating conflict between hostile states. They were the ones who killed heartlessly and mercilessly. They were the ones that had to slaughter hundreds.

Yes, ANBU were the ones voluntarily who desecrated their humanity and sold their soul to the devil for the sake of the village because, well someone had to.

And Ibiki was the one who had to evaluate their mental state and make sure that their ANBU's state of mind was stable enough to go out on the field.

None of them were stable enough after doing what they had to do.

Even the green ones weren't stable in Ibiki's eyes.

What kind of a nut case _really wanted_ to be in ANBU anyway.

It was a lost cause. If the "unstable" were removed from the force, nobody would have been left in the currently two-hundred strong elite force.

So, he came up with another way to rid the force of breaking in the field

Break them first.

He was quite good at it too. He was so good at it, that he hadn't failed to break anybody.

Kakashi Hatake, Itachi Uchiha, Uzuki Yuugao, he had managed all of them. Anko was the only one that he failed to break, but she was a special case. She didn't really count. She was already broken by Orochimaru. And well, you can't break what's already broken.

But, outside of her, Ibiki had managed to break every single one of the two-hundred elite, powerful, deceptive, spies and criminals that were called Konoha's protectors.

Every one of the best of the best had broken in front of Ibiki. Not one of them could hang onto the bit of information that they were given to protect for more than four days. That was, except for Anko. He never did find out what her favorite color was.

Of course, don't get him wrong. By no means did he enjoy doing what he did, but he prided himself in his ability to get any information imaginable out of those put into his capable hands.

And that was exactly why this civilian child in front of him frustrated him to the point that he wished he had hair just so that he could pull it out.

Hokage-sama had forbidden him to use any kind of torture that would leave…_permanent_ damage to the child, but for heaven's sake he/she should have spilled all of his/her secrets by now.

And that was another thing. He still hadn't figured out the kid's gender. For god's sake, all he knew about the kid was that its name was Kaede, no surname, and that was given willingly to the police. That coupled with the kid's age, stature, clothing, and hair, s/he was the most frustratingly gender ambiguous thing he had come across.

And although the action was within Ibiki's right, he wasn't going to go around checking on some six year old kid, that was the medic's job.

But that wasn't the problem. That wasn't the goddamn problem.

He had been working on the damn kid for six days. He had tried every single damn psychological thing that he could think of, but the kid would just come out of it as deathly silent as s/he had been since the beginning.

He had tried everything from threats to genjutsu, to slow and methodical torture that would be healed after s/he had passed out, but the kid would endure and come out of it smiling like a man possessed.

And the kid couldn't be older than six for God's sake. Half of the ANBU force had broken with far less than what he had put the kid through in the first two days. The other half had taken some more severe… persuasion as well, but that wasn't the fucking point.

The point was that the kid hadn't spilled anything to the police that had detained him/her Kaede whatever, nothing to the rookies, nothing to the Hokage, and finally, nothing to him. The kid hadn't spilled anything to the fucking information master of Konoha. In fact, the kid hadn't made a single sound.

Ibiki admired the kid to a degree and had a healthy amount of respect for him/her/it, but that... thing was driving him crazy.

But he was also afraid of it. He was deathly afraid of the haggard and thin child that was locked up in isolation right now. No civilian should have been able to stand six days in that chamber. But that six year old brat did.

And no one. No one period. Civilian or Shinobi, should be able to go through it all without making a sound. Not a single scream or curse, or cry, and even though all visual indicators pointed to the kid laughing, no sound of laughter either.

For god's sake he didn't even know exactly what he was supposed to get off of the kid. Hokage-sama had just asked him for anything and everything.

When Ibiki first heard the period of time that he was given and the broad range that he could pick the information from, he was almost insulted and thought that the kid must have balls for the Hokage to think that he was deserving of seven whole days at Ibiki's tender mercies. He understood now though. He saw why Hokage-sama might have thought it necessary, why the kind-hearted old man would be willing to subject a child to one whole week of Ibiki.

The thought occurred to Ibiki that if the kid was a spy from Iwa or some shit that they were all screwed.

And fuck the kid was a kid. A civilian kid. A kid that looked that she/he/it/Ibiki really didn't care anymore came straight off of the street.

And today was the last day that he had to make the kid reasonably compliant. God he hoped that the continual children screaming bit with the blood for a few hours would work.

If it didn't, Ibiki would have liked to suggest to the Hokage kill the brat for being an unstable danger to the public.

As Ibiki massaged his temples in a vain attempt to alleviate the massive headache that the kid was giving him, he realized that his reputation was going to be trashed by a fucking kid.

* * *

Kaede was pissed. Very pissed.

All that she had done was help out the blonde kid.

What the hell he was doing in the Akasen she had no idea. Of course he couldn't have been an Akasenko. No right-minded Akasenko would have worn, of all colors, orange. He was drawing too much attention to himself, the idiot.

Then again, no right-minded Akasenko would have gone ahead and helped an outsider. And as Kaede had discovered, it was with good reason.

When you help an outsider, shinobi get involved. And when shinobi get involved, shit happens.

The last time that an Akasenko had had been dragged over the red line, he wasn't heard of again until some shinobi had showed up two months after with a certificate of death and grave locatiob that had been shoved at the first person who claimed to know the kid.

Poor damned Kotaro.

Now look at her. Here she was, chained to a fucking chair and seething at the fucking idiot who thought that he could scare a street kid into talking with the sound of children screaming.

In the Akasen, such sounds were quite common. They had stopped fazing her a long time ago.

But goddammit. If this was what was going to happen every time that she thought that it might be a good idea to help a guy out, she wasn't too sure if she'd keep doing it.

Seriously, she takes the time to drag the kid out of the gutter, clean him up, wrap him up, feed him, and take him to the border and the thanks that she gets is some undeterminable period of time spent in a fucking concrete box. Well the food was definitely good, but really, the empty threats, physical injuries, and attempts at mind reading had gotten old, fast. The whole blacking out for an undetermined time and then waking up in new clothes, clean, and with her bladder mysteriously empty was just fucking creepy too.

The police had been fucking unnerving and the old man with the funky hat that projected the grandfatherly _Trust me! Trust me!_ aura appeared a bit less than there, but seriously? And was that chicken blood?

Fuck her luck.

Gin-sama was probably expecting her too. Goddammit she was supposed to run a game on the fourteenth. What was today? The thirteenth? The eighteenth? Kuso, October was always when the civs were the most loose with their wallets.

She knew that she had no idea and that Gin would probably be pretty damn pissed at her. Mother would be annoyed at worst, so she wasn't much of an issue, but hell if Gin wanted her working overtime at the tables.

She knew that she wouldn't say no either. Mother Ren might feed her and give her a semi-decent roof and bed roll in the kitchens, but Gin was the one that had taught her to run games, to fight, and had given her the scrolls. Gin was the one that had her loyalty, and hopefully in a few years, he would have her. No matter how well Mother ran her house, or how up-scale and luxurious it was, it was still a whore-house and Kaede did not want to be a whore, or *cough*, excuse her, a _companion_. Better to be a yakuza member than a body for sale.

Sure, half of the girls on the streets would kill or have killed in an attempt to get a spot in Ren's house, but Kaede wanted more than that. She didn't want fancy dresses, or expensive makeup and fragrances, or a new lover every night. No, Kaede wanted to call some of the shots in her life. Being a yak was a far cry from being free, but it was a lot closer than anything else she could manage.

She was already close to Gin. She was almost always running games for him or training in his facilities with his men. She had taken his mark and had already made use of it, though he wouldn't give her the tattoo yet. She also ran jobs for him occasionally, because seriously, who would expect a kid to kill them? When most people think of someone coming to collect a debt in blood they usually think more on the side of big burly and strong thug, not a scrawny aksenko.

She flicked her head to the side to get her blood sodden hair out of her face and contemplated her situation for a second. Huh, maybe the police had managed to link those low-ranking shinobi deaths back to her and that was why she was there….nah.

She unleashed her most withering glare as the scar-faced dude walked into her small reeking chamber.

She then stopped for a moment, spit in his face and fell motionless.

Ibiki just stared at her with one eyebrow cocked up.

Kaede saw the bit of a terrified glint in the back of his eyes and sighed. Perhaps it was time to break, if only to keep the guy from killing her in a misguided attempt to protect the village from a deranged lunatic child-demon

Kaede then looked around her cell and at the steel door through which her interrogator had stepped through, and nonchalantly asked "Hey, mind telling me the date scar-face?"

* * *

Ibiki was floored. After seven days of throwing everything that he could think of at the squirt, now it decides to say something. He mumbled, dazed, "The seventeenth."

"Oh goddammit." Kaede mumbled, "I wouldn't be getting out of here any time soon would I? I have places to be."

"Oho, now where would a child like you have to be?" Another voice asked as an elderly man, clad from head to toe in red and white stepped into the enclosed concrete box.

"Eh, here and there." Kaede replied smoothly with a smirk.

The man chuckled, "Well then, I can't keep you from such an important meeting at here and there can I?"

"It would be appreciated if you didn't old man."

The man laughed uproariously, "Why you remind me of someone I know Kaede-san."

"As interesting as that is, I would prefer to hear about that person while in command of my hands." Kaede replied straining at the abrasive metal cuffs and ropes that bound her wrist firmly to the arms of the rigid wooden chair that she sat on.

"Very well, very well." The man said as he waved his hand and Kaede's bonds fell away.

"Well?" she asked, running her palms over her mangled wrists, drawing them away to reveal new skin.

Ibiki gasped and stepped back.

The Hokage just chuckled. "Curiouser and curiouser aren't you Kaede?"

Kaede froze her head shooting up, realizing that she shouldn't know how to heal herself. She wanted to bash her head against the world. Slef-insulting comments raced through her head at lightning speed. '_Stupid, incompetent, fucking idiot. Are you trying to get yourself killed you little shit-head...' __However, she managed to only intone one clear word._

"Perhaps."

This time, both the Hokage and Ibiki looked shocked.

The Hokage came to himself first and stated, "Well you'll be released within the next hour if you'll answer one question of mine, quite interestingly, about the individual that you remind me of so much."

"Shoot." Kaede consented.

"Why did you help Naruto Uzumaki?" The Hokage asked, leveling his eyes with the child's.

"Who?" She asked, clearly confused?

"On the tenth of October, you were reported to have assisted one Naruto Uzumaki after he was beaten by a group of civilians, sending him home the next morning. Why?" He asked stoically.

'_The kid in orange!' _her subconscious screamed.

Kaede laughed. "Huh, this is what the hive has come to huh? Torturing a street kid for helping someone."

The Hokage's nose twitched, but he steeled his expression and asked his question again.

Kaede's eyes flickered from the closed steel door to the kunai-happy Ibiki and back to the Hokage. She signed. "He shouldn't have been where he was. The civvies left quickly enough but he would've been stuck in that alley for a while, and no outsider wants to be past the red line after dark. But why I helped him, huh. I don't know, especially since it led to a week of this shit. Maybe 'cause when a civvie gets sold in the skin trade and the police decides to descend on the block, really annoying crap happens."

Silence permeated throughout the cramped cell for a moment before Ibiki spoke. "The kid's holding something back. The last statement was right on the edge too."

Ibiki and Kaede stared each other down for a moment before Kaede looked away. "I know who he is and nobody should have to put up with that kind of shit ok. Plus, it was his birthday. Maybe something good should happen to him for once."

The Hokage grabbed Kaede's blood soaked chin to tilt her head upwards as her hand latched to his wrist. "What do you know and how?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Everything there was to know outside of his name. Hadn't made the connection before 'cause I hadn't thought that you would have given him his mother's name. I asked around after the same thing happened two years in a row. The same kid being chased into the same alley, being beaten by the same people, who shout the same slurs of demon. Really, how much more obvious can you get? '_Funny that the civvies would despise the Jinchuuriki son of the Fourth so much huh?'_ I thought that it must suck for him to be lying in that alley for two days before those ANBU of yours decided that it would be convenient to pick him up. " Kaede spat.

The Hokage looked taken aback. "This was the third year?" he asked, his wide eyes searching Kaede's for an answer.

The aversion of her eyes and silence was all he needed for an answer.

"Then…. then I must thank you Kaede, for looking out for him when I had failed to." He rose abruptly, and nearly stuttering. He turned away. As Kaede's sharp brown ones jumped up in surprise. "I apologize for any inconvenience that your detainment may have caused. The medic will come and clean you up as well as provide you with new clothes. You will be given 500,000 yen as compensation for your week here. If I will then." He said as he swept out of the room with Ibiki hot on his heels.

Kaede slumped back into her chair. '_Huh, 500,000. Maybe Gin-sama will let me off the hook this time.'_ She then leaned forward with her elbows on her knees to review her conversation with the Hokage, her face facing down and her hair creating a curtain in front of it. Any anomalies that might indicate that he was not being truthful would be crucial. Suddenly, she thought back to when both men had stared at her in shock openly. She racked her brain trying to come up with a reason for such behavior.

It was then that she realized. She hadn't forgotten to produce the sound, but in her shock, she had forgotten to move her lips.

_Fuck._

* * *

A relieved Kaede woke approximately an hour later on the roof of the Hokage tower with a fresh set of clothes on her body and a bag full of yen in her pocket. As she looked around hesitantly, uncomfortable in the unfamiliar territory that she found herself in, a thought occurred to her.

'_I'm on the __**roof**__ of the Hokage Tower. They expect me to know how to get down. They know that I can use at least basic ninja skills. Goddammit."_

Without reservation, she then unwrapped the bandages around her wrists, covered the lower half of her face with them in an attempt to disguise herself, tucked her newly sleek and smooth hair down the back of her shirt, and took off across the roof tops, heading south east to the place that she was forced to call home. The Akasen.

* * *

When Konoha was founded, certain decisions had to be made as to how the civilian sectors would be laid out.

Certain things were agreed upon easily. The area directly around the hokage tower became a bustling marketplace. The area north of the Uchiha and Hyuuga clam compounds became a district for the socially elite, filled with fine dining and arts. The area surrounding the Akimichi clam compound, of course became a busy restaurant district.

However, one area was heavily debated upon, as no clan wanted its borders near their own compound. Who would want the Akasen nearby after all.

None of the clans wanted to dirty themselves with the filth that the Akasen would bring, but no clan could deny that the presence of a red-light district would be necessary, both for the tourism economy and to keep the restless hsinobi, well, less restless.

In the end it was decided that the Akasen would be established in the north-western sector of the villiage. The Naras didn't care too much that the sector was closest to them as there was still a considerable distance between the Akasen and their compound.

Business flourished in the Akasen. Colorful brothels lined the streets as well as cheap bars and lavish casinos. The yakuza lords that popped up kept the crime down, and the profits high. Many a tourist would come to the pleasure district of Konoha for the best time that money could find in the Elemental Nations.

The Akasen also became a safe haven for foreign immigrants who wanted to start over in Konoha. The housing was affordable, the streets, safe for the children, and the booze cheap, and so the area became rich in culture, language, and, personality.

After several decades under the Shodaime and Nidaime Hokages, the Akasen of Konoha was arguably the liveliest place on that side of the continent. The melting pot of nations that the Akasen became created a life of its own and soon after, districts in other Hidden Villages created their own personable pleasure districts. All of them managed to connect through brothel owners and yakuza lords alike, creating the only functioning connection between all of the Hidden Villages that…well functioned. The Intercontinental community behind the red line remained cohesive and survived both of the first two shinobi world wars to help the districts remain strong.

That was, until the crackdown of the Sandaime Hokage on business that encouraged outsiders to enter the walls of Konoha during the Third Shinobi World War.

A Police Department was set up nearby and the crack-down began. Business declined, people were driven out of their homes, foreigners were deported, and petty criminals living in the streets either r imprisoned or put to death, while new and less merciful and intelligent yakuza lords cropped dup all across the sector.

Most of the brothels moved to Otafuku Gai, and the Akasen became a breeding ground for the black market and the Yakuza. The inhabitants were oppressed and neither the Hokage, nor his police, or as the Akasenkos so condescendingly dubbed them, the hive, cared enough to stop it.

And so the lively Akasen had become a gray and dull place full of gray and dull people.

And so the community was near shattered.

Then, Iwa surrendered and the Akasen started waking. New brothels and casinos were set up and soon life returned to normal, though with increased power in the hands of the yaks.

Then, the Kyuubi attacked, and an entire portion of the Akasen was decimated. Almost the Entire Akasen as well as the forest outside of the wall directly surrounding the Akasen became flooded with demonic Youkai after the Kyuubi was sealed and its chakra dispersed.

Thus the Forest of Death was born, through the demonic chakra morphing the wildlife there into giant, monstrous creatures, and the majority of the Akasen retreated underground into the broken, dry and relatively safe concrete sewers and water pipes that had been replaced with new steel ones and and thus, had not been in use for over three decades.

The Yakuza had spearheaded the efforts to make the pipes habitable, and so, with the entire district in debt to one Yakuza lord or another, the Yak wars broke out, one lord's men fighting another lord's men to capture more territory, business, and ultimately, cash.

Men were given the ultimatum of either joining the yakuza or being killed. Women were captured and sold as prostitutes, and the children were left hungry in the streets.

However, soon the rules of the Akasen mellowed out and a bit of life returned to the people that had been forced underground. The children formed their own little gangs to survive, finding companionship in their fellow akasenkos. The women found themselves grudgingly accepting the roles tht they were to take and spent their days drinking tea and gossiping with their fellow prostitutes. Several of the men also found themselves wealthy beyond belief and found themselves able to buy their wives back and find their children.

The fun-filled, bright Akasen of the past perished, but in its place stood a series of underground sewers full of crime, danger, despair, and strangely happiness.

And it was to this Akasen, the flea-ridden, dangerous, and crime-filled, and hope filled underground, hidden from the police by a façade of gray above, that Kaede returned to.


	2. AyameDeathNote

**Yes I took the story down and stuck it here. Didn't think that her plot was developed enough to let it stand on its own for now.**

Prologue

'_It couldn't be true. This is all a dream,'_ she thought to herself.

'_It's a horrible nightmare that I will wake up from soon,_' she thought to herself.

'_The radio alarm will be ringing soon, blasting the insufferably high-pitched and annoying voice of the host of the morning show. Takashi will jump me to try to wake me up and I'll fall out of bed the way that I always do. I'll stumble down to breakfast half asleep with my shirt on backwards and Ryuu will ridicule me for it like the jerk he is. Dad will try to scold him while Ryuu casually engages in a faux conversation with Takashi about power rangers and Mom brings the toast and eggs', _she thought to herself

'_This has to be a dream. That was the only possible explanation. If this isn't a dream, why aren't I crying? Why can't I scream? How could the warm blood that trickles down the side of my face mean so little?'_ she asked, and wondered, and screamed to herself.

"_Then how is it so real?"_ She gazed at them with glossy eyes. Beaten, bruised, bloody. Limbs twisted at unnatural angles and slashes running across necks, chests, faces.

"_It couldn't be this real. It couldn't be real._" She repeated like a mantra in her head to try to ignore it all. The ringing in her head, the pain that accompanies each breath she took. But she knew that it had to be. How could it be so excruciatingly painful, if it's only a dream? No, no she couldn't think like that.

None of it was real. It's all a dream. All a dream.

Those screams, the sudden death of one of the robbers, the crazed look in her mother's eyes. Certainly she wasn't capable of producing such terrible, horrifying vivid images. Not that bloody. Not that gory. Not that violent.

She slowly pushed herself up, trembling from the exertion, clutching at her shoulder. She grasped at the piano bench leg to lever herself up and grunted from the pain. There was something wrong with her left arm. She knew it. She couldn't feel it. There were dots dancing in front of her eyes. She managed to restrain another scream before it could rip through her lungs.

There was something about the atmosphere. There was something about this silence that she was unwilling to break, something that she wouldn't break no matter the cost. So she held in her gasps of exertion and her shrieks of agony.

She pushed back the blinding feeling of pain as she tripped over the cold arm of one of her assailants. The pistol in his hand flew to the side and fired a bullet into the piano as she fell to the ground, grinding her teeth. The safety hadn't been locked. The sound of the shot and several strings snapping echoed through the room, agonizingly dissonant in the cold December air. The silence was broken. That bothered her for some reason. Some feeling of security had just disappeared.

She pushed back the dread that was beginning to form in her mind and forced herself to stand again. Half blinded by the blood running into her eyes, she stumbled toward the kitchen where a small dark haired figure lay sprawled on the blood stained marble tile.

She collapsed by his side.

She sat there and stroked his hair, ignoring the jolts of pain she felt in her shoulder, because the pain held no consequence. There are no repercussions from a dream.

"Takashi," she whispered, "You can wake up now. Wake up."

Those brown eyes didn't move though. They remained fixed on hers, staring into oblivion.

"It's ok Takashi. The bad men are gone now. You can stop playing Ryuu's game now. We don't have to be dead anymore 'cause no one will hurt us now. They thought that we were all dead, but we're still here right Takashi. You can wake up now, you can stop playing."

However, they remained, unseeing and empty.

"Are you tired Takashi? I know that the game was a lot of work if you want you can sleep. Come on Takashi close your eyes then. It's ok to sleep," She whispered, closing his eyes with her fingers sweeping his long black bangs from his forehead. "You're safe now."

She curled his cold body up next to mine, ignoring the protests from her shoulder and head as tears of salt and blood began to dot his face. The room filled with red and blue lights and the wails of sirens accompanied by several loud bangs as the police attempted to break the door down.

"You know sissy won't let them hurt you anymore right? Sissy will be here to protect you from the bad bad men."

She didn't even look up when the cops finally made it in, because it was all a dream. The gasps of horror, the sounds of retching, and that terrible pain were all faded into the background. All she saw was the dark hair of the small figure that she held close to me. The hair that she kept stroking despite the fact that each time she patted it down, her hand would return coated in a fresh layer of blood. The voices meant nothing because they didn't have to mean anything. Dreams can be weird that way right?

The cops meant nothing. That was until they tried to pick me up, take me away from Takashi, pry her finger from the death grip she had on his frail form.

"Let go of him," one said, "He's gone."

She turned to stare at his pity filled eyes. She tilted her head to the side with a small smile and replied with a hushed, "Shhh, he's sleeping."

Redirecting her attention back to the blood soaked head of hair that she was still petting, she began to sing that old lullaby that mother sang for me.

_Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,__  
__All through the night__  
__Guardian angels God will send thee,__  
__All through the night__  
__Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,__  
__Hill and dale in slumber sleeping__  
__I my loved ones' watch am keeping,__  
__All through the night_

That was until she felt a faint prick in her arm and the world started fading into black. She saw him fall from her arms. She saw him falling but she couldn't move. She saw him hit the floor with a dull thud before the world turned to black.

_The world was turning, but it was turning so slowly. And it was winter. A beautiful winter where everything was blanketed in snow. The Sun rose over an ocean and a rainbow of colors surrounded her, taking the form of small children playing in a playground. Each color had its own voice shrieking with joy, laughing with delight and panting from exhaustion. It was such a beautiful picture, so innocent. Then beautiful white lilies rained from the skies, but instead of floating gracefully to the ground, they stuck to the children and burned them. Laughter turned into screams of agony, but one child still laughed. He turned around and bore into me with its empty dark eyes. Unseeing eyes. And then she fell, the water coming at her quickly and she closed her eyes to brace for the impact that had to come._

"_The drug should be wearing off soon so she'll wake up in due time. She might be a bit uncoordinated though" a smooth comforting voice said, slightly drowned out by the sound of the wind in her ears_

'One day I fell asleep…' she thought squeezing her eyes closed, 'One day I fell asleep and I never woke up.' she hoped so much that she would never wake up. Because when she woke up, she would have to distinguish the line between dream and reality.

* * *

That incessant beeping, how she hated that beeping as it droned on, steadily picking up pace and alerting the nurse of her coming to when she wished to be ignored for a little while more. But more than that, she hated whatever incompetent nurse that forgot to give me an adequate painkiller.

She slowly cracked her eyes open and winced from the pain. Swelling, it was most likely a black eye or something of the like. Her vision was also clouded with a sickly orange brown color. Blood. She felt her breathing, it was shallow and painful. Cracked ribs and lacerations on her stomach. Glancing down, she could see an IV inserted into her right hand while her left was propped up in a sling. Everything burned, ached and seared profusely. Everything. She wanted to scream.

"So you're finally awake are you?" a rather attractive smiling blonde nurse said as she fluffed the pillow beneath semi-conscious girl's head.

The clumsy movement sent another wave of pain shot along a path from the base of her skull to beneath her right ear and again to the top of her head. The nurse, she was young and inexperienced. There was no way that she was in her family's private hospital she realized. Why wasn't she in the care of Dr. Soto. Something was wrong here.

"Pain." The small girl whimpered in a dry brittle voice as searing pain shot all over her body with each shallow breath that she dared to take. She was disgusted by how weak and childish she sounded.

"It's nice to not feel it right? We set you up on a morphine drip, not that you would know what that is. You poor little thing, here all alone."

"No."

"No? "

"No. Not working. Not morphine, doesn't work."

"Nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about. Let's just give you another dose, maybe you're not getting enough." The nurse said as she reached over and pressed the small plastic button that hung from the IV bag.

The girl opened her mouth to protest, but all that came out was vomit as a wave of nausea hit her. She cringed from the pain that lurching forward gave her. The motion had most definitely aggravated whatever injury was on her stomach as she could feel her warm blood seeping through her shirt. Coughing, she crashed back into her pillow, her long black hair fanning around me along with the bile.

"Oh, now look what you've done silly girl, we're going to have to get you all cleaned up all over again. Wait, Hun are you ok?"

"Medical records say morphine ineffective," the girl choked out as the acid burned her throat, "Demerol allergy. Percodan… please."

The scared nurse dashed out of the room and came back with one tablet of the medicine and a very tired looking doctor.

He grabbed the clipboard from the foot of her bed and glanced wearily through the pages as she managed to force the pill down, trying to rid the taste of bile from her mouth with the water that the nurse was failing to pour into her mouth. She was a great mess.

"Morphine drip for pain,"

"No morphine doctor Percodan."

"Very well, I'll have to change that won't I? What a bother." He sighed.

"Injuries, torn left shoulder, broken left humorous and fractured ulna, two cracked ribs, and two rather large and deep lacerations on the head as well as the abdoman. Luckily, so interal organs were severely damaged. Two sets of absorbing and polyester suture closures on the head and four on the abdomen. Novocain unnecessary patient unconscious. Several x-rays done and a file for MRIs. You little lady are a piece of work."

He glanced over where she was laying with her eyes half closed. "How did I get here?" she asked.

"Well you showed up on an ambulance with a police officer."

"What happened? Why aren't I at Dr. Soto's? Where's Ryuu? Where's Takashi? Where are my—?" she stopped the words caught in her throat as the images rushed back to me. The blood, the screaming, those empty eyes.

"They're gone." she stated without a trace of uncertainty.

"Yes we're sorry to have to inform you of that rather unfortunate happening." The doctor said, not even glancing up from the papers he uninterestedly examined.

She laid back down and stared at the ceiling through her tinted eyes and murmured, "So it goes. So it goes. "

"Now come on let's get you cleaned up," the bubbly nurse said, stripping her bed of its soiled sheets, "I'm going to have to get someone to redo your bandages and everything."

She fell back onto her pillow and stared at the ceiling through her tinted eyes with apathy.

Tempted to start to laugh and never stop.

* * *

Ayame sat quietly in her bed the way she had during her waking hours for the past two weeks. After playing with the IV in her hand, being harshly scolded, picking at the bandages around her chest, being harshly scolded, picking at the stitches in her head, being scolded, and trying to test how much she could force her left shoulder to rotate, and being scolded some more, she had finally settled on counting the strange black splotches that decorated the cheap ceiling tile in room P-06 of the children's ward. She was on seven thousand four hundred three at the moment.

Let it never be said that Ayame Kiyomizu was an impatient girl.

Or that she lacked concentration.

Or that she feared headaches.

Counting tiny little dot on the ceiling through swollen eyes tinted with blood while constantly being drugged up with painkillers, and clotting medications, and other medical necessities that most people care not to think about was a difficult task.

She didn't mind very much though. There wasn't much else to do.

Oh, there was a television in the room, but Ayame didn't watch television as a rule. There were times when she would sit and watch documentaries or the news on BBC or watch a Spanish program or two to test if the self study she was doing with the help of a few of her father's old Spanish books were doing any good. She certainly was not enamored by the colorful cartoons that were put on loop throughout the particular ward that she was being treated in.

She was fairly sure that Arthur was not BBC. Well, it was, but not in the sense that Ayame was hoping for.

Takashi had loved them. She assumed that Ryuu had as well at some point, but of course he would never admit it. Couldn't really, not now.

What she really longed for was a notebook and pencil. But that certainly wouldn't have granted them to her with an IV in one hand and the other arm in a sling.

It was a crime in her eyes.

She would be busy once she got out.

Ayame just hoped that the first pencil and paper she came across were the high quality mechanical pencils and notebooks commonly found in her bedroom or hopefully transported to a bedroom that was assigned to her by the state and not the shopping lists and stubby pencils provided at Ikea.

It had occurred once.

Her mother had looked at her rather strangely for the rest of that week.

Rin Kiyomizu looked rather comical with raised eyebrows.

Ayame was content, for the moment at least. If only that insufferable blonde would shut up.

* * *

Wammy had gone to see the girl yesterday after settling affairs with the lawyer McCalman, a pathetic man with poorly veiled intentions in his mind. He left the meeting wondering how the lawyer would hold up against his young charge. He was left with Roger at the moment. Perhaps he would finally begin to speak with A and Beyond Birthday.

It was nice to hope after all.

The girl had been asleep at the time however. Most likely from all of the medication that she was on.

She was deathly pale, her skin a sharp contrast with the dark hair that splayed behind her. A small child certainly. He wondered if Rin had looked like her when she was younger.

She would not be going to any relatives. Her grandparents were dead and her father's elder brother had enough on his hands with a wife with senile dementia. No, she would not be going there. Rin had been an only child of course.

Wammy had decided that he would take her with me to the orphanage in place of allowing her to float with the wind through the system. She would be coming with him to the orphanage in a week after her shoulder had healed and her stitches taken out.

He couldn't help but wonder how she would fare.

At the moment he was on his way to pay his respects and confirm the identity of the body. It was a necessary event, but he certainly wasn't looking forward to it.

* * *

Ayame fingered her newly shortened hair with her right hand while looking into the compact mirror that the unbearable blonde had provided for her. She had known that her hair was shortened to make treatment for her cuts easier, but she had never actually seen it. She was not pleased. There was a reason that Ayame had kept her hair long. It was rather unruly short and had a tendency to stick in many different directions.

She grabbed two clips out of the bag of hospital approved hair accessories that the twittering blonde had provided and pinned her bangs back.

She somehow managed to gin and bear it.

Though the nurse certainly was annoying, she was a valuable source of information.

For instance, during her latest ramblings, Ayame had learned that a three year old poodle had rescued its owner from a burning building the day before, there was a couple that moved in recently from Germany with the one year old son, and apparently she had had a visitor.

An old and distinguished looking man had come the day before with the insufferable lawyer that her parents had tasked with managing their estate in the case of their untimely deaths. How she loathed that man and his disgusting way of speaking to her in painfully transparent half-truths and white lies in vain attempts to get her to trust him. He probably thought that he was doing such an awfully good job too. Had his splenda sweet tone failed to give him away, then his body language most certainly had. Repulsive man, certainly.

They had wanted her opinion on something about her parents' will and whose guardianship she would be placed in had to be settled. Surprisingly, her input was considered necessary.

The mysterious new character that had popped into Ayame's life had most likely requested it. The lawyer simply wouldn't care would he? What was his name, McCart, McCarson, McKiddie? No, McCalman. That was it. Dreadful man, truly. They would be back today at some point. Or at least that was what the twittering blonde nurse whose name Ayame found to be Lashawn. She considered it an interesting name. Hebrew-meaning God is gracious. She certainly hoped that he was, to Lashawn at least.

Many would say that she should be thankful for making it through that night somehow.

Ayame was fairly sure that being left alive in the aftermath of such an event wouldn't be considered a particularly gracious act in her books.


End file.
